Chicago Deaf Society | Caption with Intention | 2025
Changing what nobody had questioned in 50 years / Chicago Deaf Society "Caption with Intention"
From 1971 to 2025, captions were always white. Nobody ever questioned it. Learning this story, I felt ashamed of my own lazy thinking.
The problem
There are 466 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the world, and they've always had to rely on captions to catch the sounds and words in video. But captions themselves have barely changed in 70 years. Irony, tone, and timing don't come through in flat white text, so it was an everyday thing for a deaf person to miss a joke even while everyone else in the family was laughing right next to them.
The insight
The spark came from FCB Chicago's hard-of-hearing designer So A Ryu and Bruno Mazzotti, a CODA whose parents are deaf. Bruno says, "As someone with hearing privilege, I watched irony, anger, and joy all disappear into flat white text." It started with the question: shouldn't captions be able to do more than just deliver information — shouldn't they truly connect people?
The idea
They designed a captioning system where color tells speakers apart, the text trembles for fear and turns bold for shouting, moving in sync with the rhythm of speech. They even captured the difference between Bruce Wayne's voice and Batman's voice through typography alone. Using famous scenes from Barbie, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, and The Dark Knight, they spent about one year testing dozens of versions with the deaf community.
What happened
At Cannes Lions 2025, it won the Grand Prix in three categories: Design, Digital Craft, and Brand Experience & Activation. It also received an Oscar statuette through the Academy's Scientific and Technical Award, and was built into the submission guidelines for the 2026 Best Picture category. Netflix, Disney, and Lucasfilm announced they would adopt it, and the system was released open-source for free.
Afterthought
Deaf actress Marlee Matlin was there when it was announced at the Academy. Her reaction reportedly became the deepest confirmation the team could have asked for. Captions aren't a checkbox to tick off — they're part of the experience itself. It made me want to question the things I take for granted a little more too.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2025
Featured in
- The People Who Invented Words That Didn't ExistFive projects that had to design a notation system before they could write a single line of copy.
